A Rusting Battery In Minnesota Could Unlock The Electric Grid Of The Future
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on the West Central Tribune.
This is the first paragraph.
A pilot project between Minnesota’s second largest supplier of electricity, Great River Energy, and a Massachusetts start-up claims to have a breakthrough in battery technology that would allow for vast expansions of renewable energy on the power grid.
The article goes on to describe Form Energy’s batteries and gives a couple of pictures.
I’m not sure, but it looks like the battery can supply 1 MW for a hundred hours.
Form Energy have impressive backers and have been secretive in the past, but the concept of using iron oxide (rust) as an energy storage medium sounds to me, to be a challenging idea.
The Anonymous Widower 
I think the number of times this project has been publicised over the last 3 years indicates the long term nature of such enterprises. Whether the idea is to encourage more investment or simply to keep the media mill turning I don’t know. What I am sure is that you’ll find yourself returning to the subject in the future. I just hope that by then the media will have some real progress to report for if they don’t report we’ll be able to deduce that the the whole thing has been quietly abandoned.
Comment by fammorris | March 19, 2022 |
I find Highview Power and Gravitricity, two of the most interesting of the new energy storage developments.
Both are partnered with proven technology from world-leading companies at the heart of their systems. With Highview it’s Man turbomachinery and with Gravitricity it’s Huisman winches.
Both have run successful small scale demonstrations in public.
Highview have orders and Gravitricity has had strong expressions of interest.
Neither system uses exotic or rare materials.
Both systems have small footprints on the ground.
Both systems seem to have a degree of scalability.
What both companies need is a working full-size installation.
Neither company has been making outrageous media claims.
I believe that these two companies will be the standard against which other ideas will be judged.
Comment by AnonW | March 19, 2022 |